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<title>Where others dare not go (in the shadows of my heart) by ShaShirRa, SheDrabbles_butitsalie_ (ShaShirRa)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24538942">Where others dare not go (in the shadows of my heart)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaShirRa/pseuds/ShaShirRa'>ShaShirRa</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaShirRa/pseuds/SheDrabbles_butitsalie_'>SheDrabbles_butitsalie_ (ShaShirRa)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Yes I’m talking about Vaatu), Chaos avatar, I choose to use the best and most underrated character, I’m not sorry, My love affair with villains, The one and only time I’ll use anything from Korra, Who doesn’t love a salty misunderstood agent of chaos and destruction being repressed by ORDER, more tags to come</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:48:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,241</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24538942</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaShirRa/pseuds/ShaShirRa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaShirRa/pseuds/SheDrabbles_butitsalie_</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She was a babe, weak and barely breathing, being lowered into the icy waters of a gateway between realms.<br/>(One misstep was all it took for her fate to be altered.)<br/>She was a child, yearning for more more more. Always more.<br/>(The creature that lived inside her heart gave her more. She has never been able to decide if she regrets asking.)<br/>She was a girl barely into womanhood, asking why.<br/>(No one could answer, but the thing that lived in her had ideas.)</p>
<p>Yue has always known she was different. She’s always been aware of the whispers and the glances that never quite reach her. The imaginary friend of her youth had once told her it was because they were foolish - but she hadn’t wanted to believe Vaatu’s words anymore than she wanted to disown her people.<br/>(Yue rarely got what she wanted.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>A:tla</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Sharing is caring, right?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts">MuffinLance</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>*Nervous laughter* So, if any of you follow my main fic and are coming here wondering why I haven’t dropped the second half of that chapter I promised . . . It’s because of this? Had this brain-worm idea ever since MuffinLance posted something about it at the end of last year, but I’ve been super uninspired over it until it just. Attacked me out of no-where and shanked my brain with inspiration? I’ll hopefully be finishing the second half of that other chapter soon now.</p>
<p>If you’re new readers — welcome! Thanks for checking this out!</p>
<p>This is likely going to be a shorter (Both in chapter length and number) series than anything else I've done.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She was born weak. Barely breathing. Yugoda was running herself ragged to try and keep the Chief’s ‘Princess,’ alive. The Chief’s wife had barely made it through the birthing, was still shaky from the effort of it, even a month later. Yugoda had seen nothing like it, this thing that plagued the tiny child in her arms. Bare and raspy breaths, her limbs always shivering and quaking with cold, no matter how many furs they bundled her in.</p><p>(Yugoda privately thought Koh must be consorting with Yama’s minions, for a child in the heart of the Northern tribe to be so impossibly ill.)</p><p>When Shaman Taku suggested they place the child in the Spirit Oasis and pray to Mother Tui as one voice and one desire, Yugoda had called him mad. She had spoken out, uninvited - a <em>scandal</em>, to be sure, but a necessity also - and declared that he would only succeed in killing her charge faster. No one had listened. She wasn't sure why she'd expected them too, except that a small, secret part of her had been hoping they would care for the child enough to attempt to listen this once.</p><p>(The sad, old, angry part of her had known they wouldn’t. They never did listen to her — to any woman. Sometimes she wished she had followed Kanna onto her stolen canoe and risked dying in La’s domain. At least his waters would have been kind to her while she drown alongside her friend.)</p><p>Now she stood trying not to tremble, the child so carefully bundled in her arms, <em>fearing</em> what the crazy old Shaman was about to do. She watched with a heavy heart as they took the child - precious, small, <em>too weak</em> Yue - and placed her in a basket, which was then lowered into the Spring.</p><p>
  <span class="Apple-converted-space">(It hurt. It hurt to watch and know that her charge was receiving a rush of cold water and feeling more chilled than she already had been. It hurt to know how this was likely to end, unless Tui really did take pity on the babe.)</span>
</p><p>Yue screamed. She cried and shouted like her little heart was breaking, but Yugoda knew it was from the cold - that the girls' temperature, already so shaky, would have plummeted. She wanted to rush forward and pull the girl back out. Wanted to stand against the men that were being so stupid. Wanted to scream and rail at the <em>injustice</em> of watching them kill this child.</p><p>(But she didn’t. She didn’t now for the same reason she didn’t crawl into Kanna’s stolen canoe. Yugoda had never been strong.)</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>They watched. They watched as the child was lowered directly into the doorway between the mortal plain and the Expanse, and they sighed. Mortals were so very stupid. Kui and Fa, firstborn children of La the Boundless, circled closer to the mortal child, who was so quickly slipping into the spirit world. Her human life would fast-fade if they didn’t do something.</p><p>(They could feel the pressure of many prayers around them, directed at Mother Tui, weighting the air with mortal thoughts and fears. This was a ritual they recognized. This was a ritual that puzzled them. Did the mortals not remember the rules of this ritual?)</p><p>Kui slipped towards the child and took it’s spirit in careful pinchers, moving slowly through fogs gone milky white - slipping from one plain of being to the other as easily as blinking. The child was still crying now, but it was much weaker sounding. Fa followed, quiet and worried. A not-right-sounding-gurgle from their pinchers made Kui dip their head, check on the infantile spirit in their grasp.</p><p>Fa’s wordless warning was the only alert Kui received before they were looking back sharply. The fog had parted to reveal heavy branches - ghost impressions of trees that would be very real against their scales. Kui reared up and back, and —</p><p>The child’s spirit slipped from their grasp.</p><p>(Stupid <em>stupid</em> <strong>stupid</strong>. How had they made such a mistake? How had they taken such a wrong turn in the Expanse? They should have been nowhere near the forests.)</p><p>Kui and Fa circled carefully over where the child-spirit had drifted-fallen-landed, flickering in and out of being in a way that was all wrong. They could see her, below, crying weakly. But she was too close. Too close.</p><p>(Darkness-madness-waiting-hurting.)</p><p>To close to the Tree.</p><p>(Soft screams of endless rage and waiting. Inky black tendrils slipped from the roots and started creeping <em>creeping</em> <strong>creeping</strong>.)</p><p><strong>Mother.</strong> Fa called, sounding alarmed. It was a recommendation and an order.</p><p>(The tree had stopped screaming, but the tendrils were still creeping impossibly forward, inch by slow inch, towards the weak spirit of the child below.)</p><p><strong>Mother!</strong> Kui echoed, and turned towards Fa. They twisted in towards each-other, snouts pressed to tails, and circled, their energy coalescing.</p><p><em><strong>Mother.</strong></em> They called, hoping their voice would reach her across the Expanse.</p><p>(Below, a single tendril was close — too close! — was forever creeping towards a kicking, weak limb-that-was-fading.)</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vaatu felt the moment he first touched the wiggling-disgusting-weak larva like a jolt along his consciousness.</p><p>
  <em>Cold. Hurt. Discomfort. Fast fading not breathing. Why? Scared. Hurt. Cold scared hurt why?</em>
</p><p>It was delicious. The first taste of something real and substantial he’d had in millennia. Too bad the little thing was about to die. Vaatu quiet enjoyed remembering how to taste. There was nothing in the Tree, nothing but himself and waiting and endless, endless isolation. Raava had unintentionally found the perfect kind of torture.</p><p>(A cold whispy something <em>other</em>, spirit but greater than most. A Deity. Vaatu wrapped the tendril of himself a little tighter over the larva.)</p><p><strong>Release my Daughter!</strong> The Deity whisper-shouted. Vaatu peered at her from the depths of the Tree, and he laughed.</p><p>(White all white. Looked pure but she wasn’t - had a touch of the Storm and anger on her being. She was young but strong. Vaatu wondered when she'd come into being.)</p><p><em>‘It is mine now.’</em> Vaatu announced, experimentally tugging on the little tendril of himself. The larva inched towards him. He was tired. Snaking pieces of himself out of the Tree was hard to do. The Deity stared at him with a wide, single eye and Vaatu stared back.</p><p><strong>Her life has been gifted to me to bless. She is mine!</strong> It argued.</p><p>Vaatu paused in tugging the larva closer. Something about the words jogged a memory. A hated memory. Raava, splicing-dying-hiding, joining herself with a mortal soul and Becoming <em>Other</em>.</p><p>(Wasn’t fair - not how they play the game - not fair - supposed to be equal - there must be balance - there was no balance!)</p><p><em>‘Then we will share.’</em> Vaatu hissed, an idea, an impression building itself between the seconds of his thoughts.</p><p>The Deity blinked and he could taste the terror that came with understanding. It started to move towards <em>his</em> Larva, but Vaatu was old, older than the Lion Turtles and the Dragons and the oceans of the Mortal Plain. He was old and powerful, and he knew that what he now attempted could be done. He focused on the Larva.</p><p>
  <em>Cold not breathing hurting hurting hurting hurting.</em>
</p><p><em><strong>Quiet.</strong></em> He whispered, and slunk that inky tendril of himself up to the Larva’s eyes.<strong><em> Quiet I will help make it stop.</em></strong> He promised.</p><p>(A bond struck. A deal offered. Waiting. Waiting waiting waiting.)</p><p>A tiny appendage reached up and grabbed at the tendril of himself, seeking <em>comfort-touch-please-hurt-soothe-me!</em></p><p>The Deity shrieked and Vaatu laughed, feeling himself being pulled from the Tree into <em>being</em> and compressed. His awareness started to fade, but he could feel the touch of rubbery digits over a tiny body whose consciousness he wrapped around. Spirit magic not his own covered them both, and the Larva he now owned stopped shivering.</p><p>Vaatu turned and burrowed deep into the Larva’s being to watch and learn and understand. The deal had been struck, entirely against the Deity’s will, but that was the nature of Chaos.</p><p>It didn’t play by rules.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>Yue was six the first time she heard the voice, deep and soft and a million voices all in one. It drifted over the ice where she stood, settled like a weight on her skin.</p><p>
  <em>‘Such a large ocean. So much it hides - wouldn’t you like to see where it leads?’</em>
  
</p><p>Yue blinked into the air around her and glanced around furtively. She’d thought she’d been rather clever, sneaking out, but had someone followed her? A deep ageless, amusement-impatience-exasperation, welling from somewhere she couldn’t name.</p><p>
  <em>‘No, Larva. We are alone.’</em>
  
</p><p>Confused, Yue slowly reached up and pushed the hood of her parka off her head. Usually, she kept her hood up no matter where she was, because her people stared otherwise. One of her braids fell over her shoulder, pearly-white that faded to deep red at the tips.</p><p>(Red like fresh, dark blood. Red like the exotic shells of Pomegranate-berries. No one was sure why.)</p><p>She took a breath of cold-crisp air and turned her eyes back to the seas, and away from her hair.</p><p>(Cursed-marked-claimed. All words her people whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear. They had done something to anger Tui, and Yue would one day pay the price.)</p><p>“I will. One day. I’ll go out there too.” Yue finally said, answering the soft question the voice had asked.</p><p>(She did not worry about being seen speaking to nothing. Everyone knew she could ‘see,’ Ice Spirits. They would assume it was to them she spoke now.)</p><p>“One day I’ll sail off and have adventures, and come back with pockets full of stories.” She promised herself and the voice, trying to ignore the uneasy queasiness in her gut.</p><p>The voice didn’t respond right away, but she could feel it underneath her skin somehow, moving and drifting, through her mind and in the air around her. Because she wanted. She wanted what she said to be true. She wanted more than to one day be a wife and mother. She wanted more than to be a Princess. She <em>wanted</em>.</p><p>
  <span class="Apple-converted-space">(Something deep inside her resonated with that feeling of wanting. It curled protectively around the dream and the feelings and firmed, solidifying in her mind and around her heart.)</span>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Yes. Someday you will. But today - now, today is for showing your people what you really are.’</em>
  
</p><p>Yue blinked and tilted her head at nothing, her eyes still on the sea. She didn’t understand the wording or what the voice might mean. Was just about to ask when she felt something burning through her veins and her heart suddenly started beating faster.Yue screamed, collapsing to her knees and clutching at her chest with clumsy, mittened hands. She could hear a startled shout go up, and then running boots, but all she could focus on was fire in her veins, lighting up nerves she didn’t know she <em>had</em>.</p><p>“Yue! Yue, what’s happened?” Father’s voice, panicked and worried.</p><p>Yue might have felt bad about making him worry if a small, small part of herself wasn’t happy he was. He’d been ignoring her for months now, brushing her aside any time she tried to talk to him about her dreams. Another sharp lance of fire in her veins had Yue screaming again, all her limbs jerking as one.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> She could feel cold snow against her cheek and seeping into her hair, and the heavy weight of something, watching her from the oceans.</span></p><p>There was a crack below and around them, a surge of water suddenly rushing up in a wiggling, serpentine column.</p><p>(Yue jerked and the column jerked with her, the ice around them spiderwebbing out from her.)</p><p>There was a stunned, disbelieving silence, just as the fire in her veins started dying, and Yue collapsed, shivering and hugging herself and trying not to cry even more. She was so impossibly tired, she barely noticed when that column of water collapsed and the spider-web around her stopped growing. Her face was pressed into the snow and she was content with that because she was burning-hurting-in-pain everywhere else.</p><p>Yue was six when her chi paths were inexplicably lit up from the inside and awake.</p><p>She was six when she terrified the men around her so badly with her display of power, they limited her lessons to the most <em>basic</em> of healing.</p><p>(No girl, they thought, could handle that much raw power. She was already so delicate.)</p><p>Yue was six when she gained both bending and more restrictions than any Fire Nation soldier on deployment.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Fair Weather People</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Being a lil unconventional and working on the things I haven't been building up to for . . . . months. In this peek into the life of Chaos! Yue, we get to see . . . well, nothing happy at first, sorry. As previously mentioned, this is going to be a shorter, faster-paced series.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It had been three years - to the day - since Yue’s nerves screamed alive with something other and allowed her to bend the waters of their home. She’ been taught how to heal, but not how to fight. She’d known, of course, that their women usually didn’t fight, but she hadn’t known until Master Pakku was sneering at her that such a thing was less a choice and more a decision made for them.</p><p>(She’d been so angry, when he sneered. The voice in her head - the one that named itself Vaatu and was her friend despite his grumpy protests - had suggested they rip it off his face as a lesson. She’d been afraid of herself, had fled the room as quickly as possible. She tried not to get too near Master Pakku now.)</p><p>She stood on the edge of the cliff’s, her guard - a thing given to her a month after she gained the inexplicable ability to bend - only a short distance away. She was waiting for the boats to come in from their fishing-run, trying not to look like she was bouncing on her feet. Watching the boats still made her eager-excited, imagining the day she’d be able to set off in her own.</p><p>“There you are Yue!” Father called, and Yue stiffened.</p><p>She’d been sure she wouldn’t be missed. Had she forgotten something? She turned on a heavy-booted heel and peered at her Father as best she could from behind the fur of her hood.</p><p>“Hello, Father. Did I forget a lesson?” She asked, smiling up at him.</p><p>Arnook smiled back, and she relaxed slightly. He’d have been frowning his <em>I’m-so-disappointed</em> frown if she’d forgotten a lesson.</p><p>“No. I was told you’d come to the cliffs again.” He responded, laying a gentle hand - always so gentle, his touches - on her head and turning them back towards the sea.</p><p>Yue fidgeted only briefly, then decided to answer truthfully, since he’d only be disappointed if she remained silent.</p><p>“The fishing barge is coming back today.” She shrugged.</p><p>Arnook shifted until he was crouched next to her, back still straight and shoulders still firm.</p><p>“You like to watch them dock?” Her father asked, and his smile was something tender. He hadn’t given her that kind of smile since she’d been able to crack the ice beneath them in a fit of temper.</p><p>“I do. I like to imagine where the boats have been. I like to think about what kind of adventures the fisher-men might have been on.” Yue said absently, her eyes trained on the kind quirk of her Father’s lips.</p><p>Those same lips twitched down and Yue started.</p><p>(Vaatu felt eager in the back of her mind, a small, eerie cackle building up and ringing through her head.)</p><p>“You imagine the fisher-men go on adventures?” Arnook asked, staring at her like she was a puzzle.</p><p>Yue fiddled with the fur that lined her waist and nodded slowly.</p><p>“They must, yes? Because the ocean is wide and vast, and full of adventure, isn’t it?” Yue asked the last, tilting her head slowly.</p><p>“Ah, well, I suppose so.” Arnook nodded, seeming to relax slightly.</p><p>“That’s why I can’t wait to have my own boat.” Yue blurted out.</p><p>(Only it wasn’t her that had told her mouth to open. Vaatu was a heavy presence in her head, the weight of him forcing her mouth to open and her tongue to move.)</p><p>Father stared at her in surprise, his eyes a little wide, lips parted in bafflement.</p><p>“Have your own boat?” He echoed.</p><p>Yue felt her head nod, but she wasn’t the one nodding it.</p><p>“Yes. So I can go on adventures!” She declared.</p><p>(The small, tiny bit of hope she’d held since she first realized what boats were and could dream of them started to die at the look in her Father’s eyes.)</p><p>“Yue, you can’t have your own boat. Our women don’t travel outside the safety of the city, and they certainly don’t go on adventures.” Father said it firmly, and Yue could tell he was trying to be kind.</p><p>(But all she heard was the sound of her dreams shattering. There would be no nights spent battling La’s raging seas, no days spent watching the waters slip past her. There would be no grand boat, and no adventure.)</p><p>She’s not sure what face she made then, but whatever face it was, it must have been the wrong one, because Father looked at her like he’d never looked at her before. Not as if she was a disappointment, but as if she was a wild creature ready to bite.</p><p>(And maybe, just maybe, she wanted to be that. Because the next thing she knew —)</p><p>The next thing she knew there was the sound of cracking ice to symbolize her cracking heart, and Yue’s body was not her own. Vaatu was using her breaking heart to control her limbs, and right in that moment, she didn’t have the energy to stop him. Vaatu wanted to be away from the North Pole, so that was what he tried to do.</p><p>It might have worked better if Yue were an adult with the full ability to bend like every other bender, but she was a child that had only had her bending for a few years. (And only in the capacity of learning how to heal minor things.) They were caught within the hour, and Yue was locked inside her rooms while Arnook raged at her guards, at the Shaman, and at Yue.</p><p>She still didn’t know what her face had looked like to him.</p><p>(But she could guess, looking into her tear-streaked face, reflected back to her from her private bathing room, that it had been something terrible. Her eyes, after all, were red like dim-lit embers in her face.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>It had been years since Vaatu’s ill-timed attempt to escape the frigid North, and Yue had only just started to settle into a routine. Pretending like she had no idea what had happened that day on the cliff’s had become her personal soul-song.If anyone asked her about why her eyes went coal-red or glowing symbols no one knew how to translate appeared on her skin, she said ‘I’m not sure,’ and looked contrite. If her Father asked her what she was most looking forward to that year, she would answer ‘Tui’s Moonlight Blessing,’ because it was the furthest thing from the Fish Barge returning.</p><p>(She was hiding. Hiding how she felt and what she was, because in the days-weeks-months since her grief-filled-rage and shattered dreams took hold of her actions, she’d been made very aware of what her people expected from her. They did not want a person. They wanted a standard to work towards. The didn’t want Yue. They wanted a Princess above reproach.)</p><p>Now, her Father stopped beating around the cracked-ice, as it were, and finally told her why she was sitting in his Private Hall, sipping tea that had been prepared with too much care.</p><p>“I have spoken with Haktu, Son of Tukluk, Father of Hhan. We have agreed to unite our family’s, once you and Hhan are of age. You’re thirteen now, so it’s about time for us to be thinking of such things.” Father rushed out.</p><p>(If her heart had not cracked and broken that day on the cliffs, it would have surely broken then, hearing that her marriage had already been decided without her say in it.)</p><p>As it was. Yue stared back at her father and felt the warm-seeping anger of something other in her veins. Vaatu was stirring in her mind, excited beyond belief, because he’d been pushing for them to leave for the last year, and he wanted this to be the final push.</p><p>“Do you understand, Yue? As soon as you’re sixteen, the contract will go through. It is your duty and honor as the Princess of our people.” Father said gently.</p><p>(Like she was going to break any moment. Like she was going to let this be the thing that shattered her further. This, this violation of her wants, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever said to her. That had been the blunt admission that she had no right to the seas as a woman.)</p><p>“I understand.” She said flatly.</p><p>And she did. She understood that her Father loved her - but not who she was. He loved the idea of a dutiful daughter that did nothing she wasn’t supposed to. He loved the idea of a daughter that was calm and placid and willing to sacrifice.</p><p>Father smiled like he was relieved. Yue waited until she’d finished her tea before she stood and walked away, trailed after by her Handmaid and her guards. Vaatu was in the back of her mind, trying to push-push-pull her in the direction he wanted. Yue pulled-pulled-pushed in response, firmly.</p><p><em>This is my body.</em> She whispered, unyielding. <em>This is my body and my mind, and I don’t need your help right now.</em></p><p>(She was no longer six and burning-hurting-living from freshly opened nerves and magic in her veins. She was no longer nine and shattered, her dreams crumbling around her - temporarily.)</p><p>Vaatu’s frustration was cackling energy in her mind, but she ignored that too. They couldn’t react right now. They were being watched, and she would not risk the small portions of time alone she’d achieved. They would have time for anger soon - but not just then.</p><p><em>We have a plan.</em> She reminded the creature in her mind, taking care to lift her parka just so as she carefully glided down narrow stairs into the lit court-yard at the heart of the palace. Vaatu stirred in her mind, brushing against the mental walls she’d had to place - they marked territory in her mind. Things he was allowed to touch, and things he wasn’t, his space divided neatly from her space.</p><p><em>It would be more fun if we simply did what we wanted.</em> He grumbled. Yue smiled up at the open, blue sky and was glad she had the excuse to be smiling at something.</p><p><em>Fun, perhaps, but nothing helpful.</em> She agreed, and took a bracing breath before she turned in the direction of the Spirit Oasis. She had need of solitude, and her guards would never follow her into what her people considered the heart of their people.</p><p><em>Soon, we will be free.</em> Vaatu whispered, and there was an eagerness to it.</p><p>Yue pressed a hand to her waist, where another stolen scroll of bending had been slipped. She’d been worried someone had caught onto her thieving when her Father had called her into his Private Hall. It was good it was only the farce of a marriage contract on his mind. Still.</p><p>(It changed things, the contract. She’d been planning to leave when she was sixteen and an adult. Now though . . . She couldn’t risk it. Wouldn’t risk it. Hhan was the worst of all the young warrior-boys in training. She would not risk being shackled to him.)</p><p>Vaatu laughed in her mind, a cold-cruel cackle that only he could accomplish. He knew how she was shifting their plans, could see the thoughts reorganizing themselves within her mind-scape. They would be free.</p><p>Yue would never stop fighting for that.</p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>They watched from the waters as impossible fires raged over the ice of the Palace. She had selected this boat to steal because it was large enough to handle on her own, but could comfortably fit a handful of people. Yue thought she would like having the space to herself. By the time they realized she was not where she was supposed to be, La's waves will have taken her far from the people that had never really wanted <em>her</em>.</p><p>
  <span class="Apple-converted-space">"Father La, bless me with swift tides," she muttered, then slipped into a stance she had only been able to practice in spurts of time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="Apple-converted-space">It was hard work, convincing the waters to propel her faster, further, away. The waters knew movements she didn't yet, knew a dance she couldn't keep exact time with, but eventually, they found a rhythm. Vaatu grew quiet in her mind, his presence a heavy, comforting cloak. Yue breathed and moved and bent the waters, and for the first time in years, allowed herself to admit that the voice in her head had been the closest thing to family that she could remember. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="Apple-converted-space"><em>I am glad, that of all the children that could have been tossed into your path, it was me.</em> Yue whispered, falling exhausted into the deck of her boat and smiling when the waves continue to propel her, spirit faces within the waves smilingly moving her boat along. Vaatu did not reply, but she knew, even if he wouldn't admit it. He was glad it had been her too. The grumpy old Spirit just liked to pretend he didn't feel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="Apple-converted-space">But, she mused, content and impossibly warm where she lay on deck. At least they were finally free.</span>
</p>
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